Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.
The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still.
His kingdom is forever. Martin Luther

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Managing Expectations in Dating

CNN has a pretty interesting interview with author Lori Gottlieb, who wrote the somewhat controversial book "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough." Here were some of the best questions and responses:

CNN: What is it, in your mind, about the book and its message that got some women so worked up?

Gottlieb: I think it comes from the title. The title is used to really get women to think about what settling means. There's a survey in the book where men and women are asked, "If you got 80 percent of everything you wanted -- of your ideal traits in a mate or partner -- would you be happy?" The majority of women said, "No, that's settling," and the majority of men said, "Eighty percent? I'd be thrilled; that's a catch." So the question is: Is getting less than everything we want truly settling? And more important, semantics aside: Is getting anything less than everything we want going to make us less happy? The answer is no, and it probably will make you more happy.

CNN: What about the term "Mr. Good Enough"?

Gottlieb: We're all Mr. or Ms. Good Enough, until you fall in love with the person who sees you and recognizes you as the right person for them. In our culture, good enough is not good enough. They think that it means lowering your expectations and lowering your standards. There's a difference between lowering your expectations and lowering your standards. Lowering your expectations is saying, "be realistic." If you just put us all in a dating lineup, we're not going to get perfect ratings from the world at large. We should lower our expectations in the sense of, we have to realize nobody is perfect. If you have unrealistic expectations, it's going to be hard to find a real human being who can meet them. But lowering our standards? No.